Serbian Minister of Economy and Regional Development Nebojsa Ciric stated on Friday that the package of measures to boost the economy should produce similar effects as it did back in 2011, when over 40.000 jobs were preserved thanks to the government measures, and announced that the incentives for local and foreign investments in production would be upped by over RSD 1 billion, thus totalling nearly RSD 5 billion.
Our goal was to back production, primarily the metal industry, to save jobs, maintain production capacities and facilitate their operation, Ciric told Tanjug commenting on the Thursday decision of the government to adopt a package of loan support to the economy in 2012 worth around RSD 7 billion.
If train-car producers or companies such as IMR from Rakovica have work to do, it entails their connection with some other companies as well, be they small, mid-size or in some cases, even big companies, Ciric said.
This all leads to a higher number of jobs which we would manage to preserve, this entails production of durable consumer goods, and the government’s package of measures is aimed more at the production than service sector, which is highly important, Ciric said.
Although the government cannot set aside funds in the 2012 budget for subsidised loans for solvency and investments, over RSD 1 billion would be allocated to production investment incentives this year, which would then be distributed via the Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency.
The year of 2011 made it quite clear that the policy implemented by the Serbian government would eventually yield results, Ciric said and added that Serbia recorded positive growth which considerably exceeds that of Slovenia or Croatia, which expect to realise small growth rates, zero growth or even face recession this year, while Serbia should achieve as much as 1.5 per cent growth.
Source Emg
